


Rocket Man

by TheVeryLastValkyrie



Category: Endeavour (TV), The Hour, The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 22:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4804541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVeryLastValkyrie/pseuds/TheVeryLastValkyrie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because they've both got this terrible habit of falling in love with people who are in love with other people. There's more than enough scandal to occupy a newsman in Oxford...among other things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rocket Man

**Author's Note:**

> Because Tom Burke and Maimie McCoy should be together in every fictional universe. Because Bill and Alice deserved more pages in their stories. Because I can't get over how good they look together.

The first time they meet, she’s smiling her secretary smile: brilliant and glossy, and her dark fringe forms a straight line above her dark brows, but he’s almost certain he prefers blondes. She deposits a plate of biscuits on the low table in front of him, bending her knees in her checked skirt, untucking and re-tucking the green scarf which matches her green sweater as she straightens.

“Mr Douglass will be with you shortly, Mr Kendall.”

‘Mr Kendall’, Bill, suddenly feels horribly awkward. He gestures towards the plate. “Would you…”

She smiles her secretary smile, shakes her head. “Oh, no thank you.” Her lightbulb brightness wavers a little, momentarily sharpening to a laser beam as she adds, “And if I had to pick – Garibaldis.” But he blinks, and it’s gone, and she goes back to her desk and he tries to go back to his newspaper.

 _Alice Vexin_ , the nameplate on her desk reads, so shiny that it must be new.

“Alice?”

She raises her head. Her eyes are green too, like her sweater.

“Thank you.”

Hers is the kind of job which doesn’t have to be acknowledged, and she lowers her head again with no intention of thanking him in return.

**.**

“Alice.”

She caught a glimpse of him through the safety glass, as he meant her to; she opens the door warily. Her fingers stay clenched on the frame in case she needs to slam it shut, run for her life, catch a plane to Timbuktu and never return.

He may always inspire such a reaction in women, he’s never asked.

“Mr Kendall.”

The gold tin has been sitting in his lap like an overlarge ingot, and now he holds it out with both hands. “There are squashed fly biscuits in there, the girl in the shop promised me. She called them ‘squashed fly biscuits’ too.”

But she doesn’t come any closer. “What do you want?”

“A story,” he admits, easily, honestly. “I know you have one. I know you have dozens, stashed away in the drawers of your desk.”

“Whatever you think you know, Mr Kendall, I don’t share company secrets.”

“Which is precisely why I know you have a story, and why I am attempting to bribe you –” He rattles the tin. “With these.”

Her eyebrows go up. “ _This_ is your attempt at bribery?”

“Yes.”

She turns back around. “You might at least have tucked a fifty in with the biscuits.”

**.**

He’s punctual, she’ll give him that much: that much rope to hang himself with, that is. She stares at the jangling phone, pursing her lips. On the one hand, she’s in no doubt who it is on the other end. On the other, there’s always doubt. It could always be anyone, but it usually isn’t.

“Douglass Engineering, Mr Douglass’ office?”

“Ah, yes, good afternoon. Do I have the pleasure of speaking to Miss Vexin?”

She starts to wind the phone cord around her finger, counting the spirals. “Go away, Mr Kendall. Go and do some journalism.”

“I’m terribly afraid I can’t, you see, as I’m in desperate need of someone in your maintenance department. Could you possibly put me through?”

“No.”

It sounds awfully like he’s trying not to laugh. She isn’t amused. She won’t be amused. “Dinner,” he says, slightly muffled. “As the biscuits were such an astronomic failure, I’m prepared to up the ante. Dinner, anywhere you like.”

“I’m putting the phone down now, Mr Kendall. Good afternoon.”

“Alice?”

“What?”

“I can’t think of anything worse than talking to someone in your maintenance department.”

“I know.” She bites her lip and puts the phone down.

**.**

“Mr Kendall.”

“Bill.”

“ _Mr Kendall_.”

“Alice.”

“I’m perfectly capable of walking myself home, thank you.” She swings her coat – mint green, not like her eyes – around her shoulders. “What you’re doing is tantamount to harassment.”

“Think of it as determined persuasion.”

“Persuasion?”

“I’m just very persuasive when I’ve set my heart on something.” Those words make him think of Bel, and they leave his mouth numb. Bel was, is blonde, though, and the woman with the mint green coat has hair which goes black in the rain.

“You’re not persuasive, you’re irritating.”

“Am I irritating you?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

There was a pretty girl wearing her perfume the other day, a beautiful girl asking questions about the award he keeps behind his desk rather than on it. He could’ve taken her out to dinner. Perhaps he should have.

“Say you want me to stop,” he says suddenly, when she’s gone up the steps to her front door and he’s still at their foot. “And I’ll stop.”

Her mouth is a shiny coral colour, and he can’t stop looking at it.

“I don’t you want you to stop,” she tells him, because she can’t stop looking at him either. “But I can’t. Not yet.”

**.**

She does her best to explain Morse to him, insofar as anyone can explain Morse. She doesn’t touch her drink, but she talks until her throat is sore, until all the other people in the pub have drifted away to their own beds or someone else’s. The publican’s only amenable because he knows her, knows she’ll lock the door on her way out.

“I can’t be second-best again.” And then she drains her glass, gulping fizz like a fish until her lungs are bursting for breath. “I need to come first with someone.”

“You _are_ first, Alice.” He takes hold of her stiff fingers, long and thin. “You’re the gold medal – the blue ribbon – the Nobel prize in whatever you want to be the Nobel prize in.” She grips his wrist in return, pressing on the veins.

And then he gives up the ghost, the blonde.

“You could come first with me.”

She looks at him: not at the bar, not at the surface of her drink, not at her own cold hand waking up in his grasp. She looks at him, only at him.

“And what should I give you in return, Bill?”

“Whatever you want.”


End file.
